EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures and Legendary won a heated, multi-studio bidding battle for Red Notice, an original action film with tentpole potential that will be written and directed by Rawson Thurber as a star vehicle for Dwayne Johnson. Pic is a globe-trotting heist thriller designed as a two-hander for Johnson and…

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros is negotiating with Thomas Lennon & Robert Ben Garant to write and Rawson Thurber to direct a relaunch of the Cannonball Run franchise. Andre Morgan and Alan Gasmer (Vikings) are producing. Studio set this up last year, originally intending for Etan Cohen to both write and direct. Lennon…

UPDATED, 6:03 PM: Legendary has won the multi-studio bidding war for rights to Skyscraper, an action pitch set in China starring Dwayne Johnson and to be written and directed by his Central Intelligence helmer Rawson Marshall Thurber. Mary Parent, who runs Legendary now, was said to be aggressive in wooing the…

Universal Pictures optioned Steve Breen’s picture book Unicorn Executions and attached Dodgeball‘s Rawson Thurber. Scott Stuber will produce through his Bluegrass Films banner, and Saturday Night Live writer Simon Rich will pen the script. The book will be published in May by…

EXCLUSIVE: Hot off co-writing Trance for director Danny Boyle, Joe Ahearne has sold an untitled supernatural thriller pitch to Warner Bros. Dan Lin will produce under his Lin Pictures banner. Lin’s veep Jon Silk came up with an idea they are keeping under wraps and Ahearne expanded it before they pitched it to the…

Dodgeball director Rawson Thurber is rewriting The Umbrella Academy for Universal Pictures, based on the 2008 Eisner Award-winning Dark Horse comic written by My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way. Mark Bomback wrote the first draft. The comic revolves around an adopted dysfunctional family of superheroes with bizarre…